Community safety starts with community choices
Who decides what a neighborhood camera shares, and how to see every search made of it.
1 min read
When a town, a school district or a homeowners’ association installs a Kerbside camera, it makes a decision about safety. It also makes a decision about sharing. We think both should be made with open eyes.
Every Kerbside camera has an owner, and the owner chooses which agencies may search its reads. Most owners share with their local police department and with neighboring agencies, because vehicles involved in crimes cross town lines. Owners can change those choices at any time from the Kerbside dashboard, and can see every search made of their cameras’ reads by another agency, with the reason that agency entered.
In 2025, agencies using Kerbside reported thousands of stolen vehicles recovered with the help of a Kerbside read. Each of those recoveries began with a community deciding to take part.
We know that sharing raises questions, and that communities want to answer them for themselves. That is why Kerbside keeps a record of every search, why reads are deleted after 30 days unless an owner chooses otherwise or a read is attached to an investigation, and why Kerbside does not use facial recognition or identify people.
Three questions every Kerbside owner should be able to answer:
- Which agencies can search our cameras today?
- Who searched them last month, and why?
- Who in our community can change those settings, and how do residents ask them to?
If your community uses Kerbside and cannot answer all three, your Kerbside administrator can, and our team will walk through the settings with you.